Leadership Advice from America's Most Trusted Leaders!

Leadership is not about the next election, it’s about the next generation.
Simon Sinek

The class of 2016 at my high school nominated me to give the commencement address. This was a great honor. As I thought about what to say, it was not as easy as I thought. I put some thought into what I could say that would be succinct, meaningful, and also reflect my experiences. I came up with: Life is About Experiences and Relationships.

I decided to share the speech (minus all the introductions and salutations) because it relates to my experiences and much of what I have written in previous leadership articles.… Read the rest

“The choices you make on a daily basis affect what you will have, be, or do in the tomorrows of your life”Steve Brown

We hear it all the time…right? “It’s all about Attitude!” “If only so and so had a better attitude, they’d be unstoppable.” Well, as a recently transitioned Air Force Veteran, I’m here to tell you that your attitude is probably the single most important factor in determining the level of success you’ll achieve in whatever it is you choose to pursue, in a professional role and/or in your personal life.

Webster’s New World Dictionary defines attitude as “A ballet position similar to the arabesque in which the raised leg is bent at the knee.” Another Webster definition for attitude is “The position of an aircraft or spacecraft determined by the relationship between its axes and a reference datum (as the horizon or a particular star).” But those definitions are not the one I want to work from to illustrate my point. … Read the rest

Recently, my sweetie and I were out at Creve Coeur Lake in St. Louis County, Missouri.

There’s a paved path almost 4 miles long circling the lake and on any given day people are either walking, running, biking or blading on the path. At overlapping times, a large group of geese cross multiple sections of the same path, making their way between an adjacent meadow where they chill out, and the lake where they swim and fish. Occasionally – okay, regularly – they inconveniently leave droppings right in the middle of the path.… Read the rest

“Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.”John F. Kennedy

Imagine being nineteen years old, in college, making good progress studying the administration of justice and having a very realistic goal of continuing on to law school for an eventual career as a lawyer. Then imagine the shock you would experience when just a couple of weeks before going home for Christmas, the Selective Service System of the United States conducted a draft lottery to determine the order of call to military service for the Vietnam War—and learning that you ‘won’ the draft lottery. In fact, the Viet Nam war’s draft lottery was the only lottery I have ever won and like many lotteries, it changed my life.… Read the rest

A renaissance person or polymath is a one who is skilled in multiple fields or multiple disciplines, and who has a broad base of knowledge. In short a multi-dimensional person.

I have always admired those renaissance people who were accomplished at many tasks, those with an hidden skill such as music, painting, poetry, or cabinet making. Unfortunately I am not one of those people. Embarrassingly I am not even a jack-of-all-trades. But secretly I want to be a polymath.

I have been blessed in my lifetime to serve with many incredibly talented leaders. And for the life of me, I can’t point to any specific group of skills that make a great leader.… Read the rest

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.”Winston Churchill

Richard Branson’s first business venture was a mail-order company started with funding accumulated by handing out leaflets outside of concerts. A 15-year old Bill Gates ditched school in Seattle to develop a traffic-measurement program called Traf-O-Data, netting $20k for himself and fellow student, Paul Allen. Colonel Jimmy Doolittle led 80-men in sixteen B-25 bombers to barely leave the deck of the USS Hornet on a Tokyo raid in 1942, when landing—even return—was tenuous, at best. And a little girl took on a wicked witch and saved all of Oz, despite the efforts of a self-doubting lion.… Read the rest

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